How do I create a memory dump of my computer freeze or crash?

Question

As a lot of us encounter freezes or crashes, I am wondering how do I manually initiate a computer to freeze in order to create a memory dump to view and diagnose any issues that may be involved with the crash?

I am looking on how to force the computer to crash instead of waiting for the computer to do it itself.

Answer 1

Your question is slightly unclear -- do you want to make it generate the dump when it crashes, or do you want to generate a dump when it isn't crashing and try to diagnose it from that? If the latter, that's probably not a particularly good way of going about it.

Enabling crash dumps

You can enable crash dumps by going to

My Computer > Properties > Startup and Recovery > Settings

and then select either a minidump or a kernel memory dump under Write debugging information. This should write a minidump when a crash is caught.

Initiating a manual crash

Required set-up

If you're asking how to crash manually and get a minidump written, you can do the following:

1. Open regedit.

2. Locate the following key if you have a USB keyboard:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters

   Or the following key if you have a PS/2 keyboard:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters

   In the Edit menu, click Add Value and add the following registry entry:

   • Name: CrashOnCtrlScroll
   • Data Type: REG_DWORD
   • Value: 1
      

3. Exit the registry editor, then reboot.

Crashing the (hung) system

After the reboot, you can trigger a crash by pressing the SCROLL keyboard key twice while you hold the right CTRL key, as long as you have Windows set to write a dump when doing this, it will write it to %SYSTEMROOT%\Minidump.

The hotkey in short form is CTRL+SCR LK+SCR LK.

Answer 2

Dumping a a process when it hangs or crashes

I would use ProcDump to create a dump of the proccess that is crashed:

ProcDump is a command-line utility whose primary purpose is monitoring an application for CPU spikes and generating crash dumps during a spike that an administrator or developer can use to determine the cause of the spike. ProcDump also includes hung window monitoring (using the same definition of a window hang that Windows and Task Manager use), unhandled exception monitoring and can generate dumps based on the values of system performance counters. It also can serve as a general process dump utility that you can embed in other scripts.

Answer 3

You need to tell the computer to make a crash dump when it blue screens in

My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced -> Start and Recovery.

Analyzing the dump

I use these procedures to analyze the dump.